‘Hallucinations and Spiritual Experience: Voices, Visions and Revelation’, Royal College of Psychiatrists Spirituality SIG Conference, London, 25 November 2016

Hearing the Voice team members Charles Fernyhough, Christopher Cook and Ben Alderson-Day are delighted to be speaking at the Royal College of Psychiatrists’ Spirituality SIG Conference on ‘Hallucinations and Spiritual Experience: Voices, Visions and Revelation’, which will take place in November later in the year.

Programme Outline
Unusual perceptual phenomena, including visual and auditory hallucinations, have been associated with spiritual and religious experiences since ancient times. Since hallucinations associated with major psychiatric disorders not infrequently include spiritual and/or religious content, this has led psychiatrists to take a reductionist approach that treats all such anomalous experiences as pathology and likely to be indicative of mental illness. However, research shows that many people who experience anomalous perception should not be diagnosed as mentally ill and are not in need of mental health services. For some, such experiences serve to enrich and enhance their sense of life purpose.

This day conference will bring together recent scientific research on hallucinations with spiritual and religious perspectives. Mental health professionals need to be aware of alternative frameworks for making sense of anomalous perceptual experiences, with important implications for both clinical practice and the spiritual life.

This meeting is open to all members of the College and non-members. It will be especially relevant to psychiatrists, students, trainees, chaplains, spiritual directors, academics and researchers interested in spiritual and religious experiences.

More information about the conference can be found on the Royal College of Psychiatrists’ website. The full programme and list of speakers, is available here.